Today, a federal judge sided with parents of schoolchildren in a Pennsylvania town, who sued their school district for changing their science curriculum to include a disclaimer that said "evolution is a theory, not a fact," and proposing Intelligent Design as an alternate theory of the universe. The judge was very vocal in the ruling, not just saying the school board was wrong, but slamming the entire ID movement to begin with. It was a truly ugly day for ID proponents (including Yours Truly).
The Facts
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is just that -- a theory. It touches on a lot of subjects and has never been proven, despite 150 years of research attempting to do so. It is virtually impossible to prove the central tenet of Darwinism: that all life originated from a common ancestor. Looking at all the species on Earth, no one has ever found fossils or bones of any "missing link" species -- those types of animals that show a transition from one species to another. There are a number of other problems, as well, with the theory. Many books have been written describing these problems. Many scientists have authored papers and books describing their concerns about the theory. Some debate (not a lot) has taken place in the scientific community on the subject. I say "some" because generally, secular scientists dismiss those scientists who dare to disbelieve Darwinism, and routinely name-call or otherwise hurl insults at them. They rarely address the issues raised.
Intelligent Design is another theory -- also largely unprovable -- that basically states that the more rational and logical approach to the origins of life and the universe lies in the actions of an intelligent entity. Proponents will typically rattle off many of their main concerns with Darwinism and other related origin-of-life theories, then propose ID as a more reasonable alternative. They will rarely bring up God, for a few reasons; the most important of which is that the theory doesn't depend on it. It simply states that when you observe things that are particularly complex or extremely unlikely to happen by chance, a reasonable person would also consider the possibility that some intelligence was at work doing these things purposefully.
To me, and to ID proponents, these things seem like common sense. And because ID is straightforward, theists are likely, once they've actually listened to some well-spoken person go over it, to buy into it and at least consider its rationality.
The judge in the Pennsylvania case did not agree.
Here is the text of the disclaimer that the school board required to be read at the outset of the science class. Ask yourself how this seems unreasonable or like prosyletizing:
The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.Hardly the rantings of bible-thumpers. This is the reasoned approach that is the ID movement.
Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.
Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.
With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
Yet in this particular case, ID proponents were few and opponents were many. Since ID mainly states the case that evolution is simply a theory, not a fact, and doesn't put ID out there as something that can be proven in any way, the school district got slammed hard. The district, represented by the normally able Thomas More Law Center, offered no peer-reviewed documents in support of its theory or in opposition to evolutionists'. ID's stance that supernatural forces are at work in the universe is unprovable, and supernatural causations are by definition excluded from "science," so they got burned from several directions at once. The judge just chewed them up and spit them out.
His comments:
...this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
What Doomed ID?
The reason why the court (the judge) ruled against teaching ID seems, in reading the court document, to rest on the notion that ID is simply "creation science" or "creationism" re-packaged to be more palatable to a sophisticated audience. In fact the court writes, after 20 pages of support, that "The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism."
Creationism is the idea that what the Bible says about the formation of the universe in the Book of Genesis is literally true, word for word. Putting aside the fact that Genesis had the more consistent and (ultimately, proven) accurate description of the creation, or "Big Bang" event than science had proposed until recently, Creationism always was a theology-based idea. It was rooted in the Bible and garnered very little scientific evidence to support itself. Creationists, for example, believe that the Earth is 4,000+ years old, which is just old enough to have included Adam & Eve and the Torah, from the Bible. Science actually proves otherwise, and very few people take, or ever took, Creationism seriously.
ID, on the other hand, is based in science, not on the Bible. It suggests that as we progress with science, more and more evidence is emerging that points to a supernatural cause in the origins of life and the universe. It points out that while you can't empirically prove God exists, you can observe things in the universe that are so statistically improbable as to be called virtually impossible; whole chains of these types of things; and infer the existence of this supernatural power as a result.
Endorsement of Religion
The court went on to state that, of the disclaimer offered at the biology class "we find that an objective student would view the disclaimer as a strong official endorsement of religion." In other words, somehow if you put out a disclaimer that Darwinism is a theory, and offer an alternate for students' consideration, this is somehow akin to the school district having an official religion. This is patently ridiculous. And in the end, it's offensive to me as a Christian. But it's not really a surprise. This society has been drifting further and further away from its Christian roots in favor of secularism/atheism for many years, now. It's frightening, and if it goes much further, this country will be in serious danger of collapse.
At the end of the day today, Frank Pastori, a Christian talk-show host on KKLA here in Los Angeles, and a proponent of ID, told callers to his show tonight that, flatly, "ID is dead. It's over." While that seemed really alarmist to me at the time, having spent time reading the entire 139-page court opinion on the trial, I can see why he said this. The ID community utterly failed to stand up for its ideas in a big case, and the rest of the scientific community had it together. They made the ID team look like fools.
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